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Theater Related Books |
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Nine Contemporary Jewish
Plays
Edited by Ellen Schiff and Michael
Posnick
Forward by Theadore Bikel |
Published 2005
587 Pages
9 illustrations
University of Texas Press
List price $39.95 |
Click here to buy the book
 |
A new volume of, as the title says contemporary
Jewish plays, demonstrates what Theodore Bikel says in his forward. "This
collection represents pieces of a kaleidoscope of Jewish experiences . . .
rather than a melting pot." The nine plays view the world through very
different perspectives and raise very different issues. However, they have
in common much of the mental richness that Potomac Region audiences have
come to understand by attending the plays of Theater J at the DC Jewish
Community Center. The concentration on big questions - What is life about?
Why are we here? What is the nature of humanity? What is the nature of God?
What do we owe others? What do we owe ourselves? - these are questions
underlying so many of these works. It is not surprising, then, that of the
nine authors represented here, five have been produced at Theater J and three of the plays have been seen on Theater J's stage. One, Life in
Refusal, is a play by Theater J's Artistic Director, Ari Roth. In this
volume, he is in good company. |
Contents: The text of nine plays from the New
Play Commissions in Jewish Theatre, a program of the National Foundation for
Jewish Culture.The plays are:
- A Certain Raquel - a play by Nora
Glickman set in Buenos Aires in 1900-1935 and the present day dealing with
the" Jewish White Slave Trade."
- Asher's Command - Marilyn Clayton
Felt's examination of the bond between a Jewish military man and an Arab
mechanic on the West Bank.
- Exile in Jerusalem - a play by
Motti Lerner, author of Passing the Love of Women, which was produced at
Theater J in 2004. His The Murder of Isaac was given a reading in the
2000-01 season. This play deals with German Jewish poet Else Lasker
Schuller who fled Nazi Germany and spent the rest of her life in
Jerusalem.
- Green Violin - a musical by Elise
Thoron about Russian Yiddish theater and the artist Marc Chagall.
- God of Vengeance - an adaptation by
Donald Margulies of a 1906 Yiddish melodrama about the owner of a brothel
who tries to arrange a marriage for his daughter to a rabbinical student.
Margulies' Collected Stories was produced at Theater J in the 1999-2000
season. A different adaptation of the play was produced at Theater J in
the 2000-01 season.
- Life in Refusal - Ari Roth's play,
in
which when it premiered at Theater J, Holly Twyford played an American
filmmaker who attempts to aid a Russian Jewish refusenik who wanted to
emigrate to the United States, who was played by Lawrence Redmond.
- See Under: Love - a play by Corey
Fischer set in a Holocaust concentration camp where one elderly man simply
cannot die - he's a teller of tales and the commandant of the camp orders
a new story each night.
- The Action Against Sol Schumann - a
play by Jeffrey Sweet that combines the story of the trial of an aging man
accused of atrocities when he served as a "Kapo" in a Holocaust
concentration camp, and the visit of President Reagan to the Bitburg
cemetery in Germany where German World War II veterans including SS members
are buried. Sweet's The Value of Names was produced by Theater J in the
1998 season.
- The Last Seder - Jennifer Maisel's
family drama which was produced at Theater J in 2003 and was later turned into
a movie.
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